Building on the story of Optimus Maximus keyboard, will major computer manufacturers follow the example? The OLED technology that is used in the keyboard is still a very expensive alternative to a standard keyboard, but surely there are people out there who wouldn’t mind paying an extra $1000 for laptops that might look something like this?

Each key image can be fully customised, separately for any of the applications used. Language layout can be easily switched. There is no need to display secondary symbols like !ӣ$% on the keys, they will appear automatically after SHIFT is pressed. And you can get rid of some annoying keys that you never use, like, in my case, the one just below Esc.

Among many different highly attractive yet hardly realistic technologies of the near future, OLED is the one to keep an eye on. The advantages of an OLED-based displays over regular LCD display, similar to the one that you are most likely looking at at the moment, are amazing: OLED screens can be as thin as a human hair, they can be bent and transferred to fabric, they produce light themselves and don’t need backlight, they can display greater range of colours, image quality is equally good when viewed from any angle, and, to top it all, they are theoretically cheaper to produce in the long-run than regular LCD displays.

The only downside is the wearability of OLED elements- the lifetime is very limited and is more than ten times shorter than LCD. This, however, is only a matter of time, according to some industry experts, and fully customisable laptop keyboards will be only one of the many possible revolutionary applications, like multi-use newspapapers or video screens embedded in clothing.